College Confidential’s “Dean,” Sally Rubenstone, put together 25 of her best tips. Get your free copy of the "25 Tips from the Dean" eBook and get helpful advice on how to choose a college, get in, and pay for it: http://goo.gl/9zDJTM

Replies to: Class Ranking

Depends on college and ranges from little to no importance to the key factor for admission. For the UC's, its importance is twofold for in-state residents. If you are in top 4%, you are entitled to admission to a UC (not necessarily one of your choice) regardless of SAT scores. Also, the overall policy of the UC's is to admit as many of the top 12% as they can. Top 20% means your chances are low.

i do know that in any college book, i believe EVERY UC has at least 95% in the top 10 percent of the class...... i question this, as i cant believe that uc-irvine has more top 10% ppl in the class, than yale university

They do have more because they will take any old top 10% kid from any old school with whatever ECs and SATs that person happens to have. The Ivies are so great because their student population is going to much more widely accomplished, brilliant, and diverse than any UC, even Berkeley. At Yale or Harvard or Brown or Princeton the student are much more accomplished than just their numbers.

with the exception of elc, class rank is NOT used as an admission criteria to the UCs. (Even if they wanted to use it, they can't since less than half of Calif public high schools rank students.)

Note, that the UC are designed to accept the top 12% of students STATEWIDE, not necessarily per high school. Thus, strength of schedule, test scores, essays, ECs, and other factors (low income, first gen to college, poor performing HS), are used during comprehensive review.

Helpful Links

About College Confidential

Welcome to the leading college-bound community on the Web!

Here you'll find hundreds of pages of articles about choosing a college, getting into the college you want, how to pay for it, and much more. You'll also find the Web's busiest discussion community related to college admissions, and our CampusVibe section!About Us